Thursday, 4 September 2014

The Story Behind the Image on the Blog Header

I met her (virtually) in April during the month-long A-Z blog challenge, and we connected well because of our common interest, India and her culture! Eli is a wonderful blogger who has made Mumbai her home for the last few years and is happily enjoying the rains, traffic, and all the sumptuous street food the mega-city has to offer. Originally from Norway and having lived in Greece for many years, she enjoys traveling and exploring new places and is now definitely on her way to become a Mumbai-wali. She writes a beautiful and highly enjoyable blog about her expat life atExpatliv - in Exotic India.

Sometime ago Eli so kindly asked me to write a guest post for her blog, about something interesting in Pondicherry. It can be anything, she said. I considered a few ideas that came to mind but rejected them all. And then one day as I casually looked at the header image on my blog, I knew what I wanted to write.

Dear reader, have you ever wondered where this header image is from? It's from... let my guest post on Eli's blog tell you a story and you will know the answer.

Once
upon a time, maybe 500 years ago or more, there lived a highly evolved Siddha,
a Yogi (Self-realized person) known as Kaduveli Siddha. He lived in a small
village presently known as Irumbai, about 10 kms from Pondicherry, near Auroville, the international township with
a deeper aim to realize the inner unity of humankind.

Auroville wants to be a universal
town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and
progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The
purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity.

During a
time when the village and nearby areas were not getting any rains and the
drought was making life difficult for people and other creatures,
Kaduvella was busy performing his austerities and spiritual practices (tapasya)
sitting under a peepal tree. He was so fully concentrated in his tapasya and
the intensity of his physical and spiritual heat (tapas) got so
strong that soon an anthill started to rise up around him. People thought
that the drought was getting worse because of the tapas generated
by the Siddha's intense tapasya and austerities. But they
didn't know how to break the yogi's concentration, especially when they saw the
anthill grow bigger and bigger with every passing day.

Suffering
because of the drought and resulting deprivation, the villagers approached the
king who agreed that the Kaduvella's ongoing tapasya must be 'broken' in order
to bring down the intensity of the 'heat'. But he too didn't know how. A temple
dancer, named Valli, a woman of enticing beauty and a devotee of Lord Shiva,
decided to do her best to get the attention of the yogi, and to rescue the King
and people from the adverse effects of his tapasya (penance).